Bobby Sebastian of Pineville was installed as chairman of the Louisiana Society of American Foresters at the state group's annual convention in Alexandria September 18. He succeeds Dr. John Adams of the Louisiana Tech University School of Forestry.

Sebastian is District Ranger on Catahoula Ranger District, Kisatchie National Forest at Pollock, Grant Parish, Louisiana, the post he has held since 1988.

In a preview of his plans for the Society during the coming year, Sebastian said his major emphasis will be membership development. "This is an ongoing thing, but I have some ideas for adding to it," he said. One program is a joint meeting with the Texas Society, probably as early as May of 2003. Preliminary discussions are underway with Texas representatives, Sebastian said. A site is not yet picked for the two-state meeting.

The new LASAF chairman is a native of Houston, Texas, and a 1974 forestry graduate of Stephen F. Austin University at Nacogdoches. From 1975-77, he worked as a forester with the Peace Corps in Liberia, West Africa, where he met his wife-to-be, Abigail, a native of Greensboro, North Carolina, serving as aa Peace Corp teacher.

Upon his return to the United States in 1977, he was employed with the Forest Service as a trainee on the Catahoula Ranger District. He moved to the Kisatchie District, and then to the Sumter National Forest in South Carolina, where he served until 1988, when he was named District Ranger on the Catahoula, where he began his Forest Service training.

The Sebastians live in Pineville. They have three children, a daughter, Sarah, 23, a teacher in the Austin, Texas school system; Teresa, 20, a student at Northwestern State University at Natchitoches; and a son, Brian, a senior at Pineville High School.

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